Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday March 24, 2008 @12:41PM
from the what-doesn't-suck dept.

Pickens writes "Aaron Rower has an interesting post on Wired with the "Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student" that includes awful textbooks, professors who are rarely encouraging, the dearth of quality counseling, and every assignment feels the same. Our favorite is that other disciplines have inflated grades. "Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films," writes Rower. "Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores." For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. If you want to complain about your education, this is your chance."

According to the author of the article... inorder for engineering to not suck, we should have inflated grades and beautiful textbooks (whatever that it). He says that the textbooks are awful because they are thick and black and white and contain long equations (i don't know if i should laugh or what).. His other reasons are more related to the school in which he is studying and not with engineering

Seriously... I don't think this article is either NEWS FOR NERDS or STUFF THAT MATTERS. Clearly the author should not try to become an engineer and should switch to some other discipline where he gets inflated grades and the incorrect notion that he is bright.

Then you're in the wrong job. I love my engineering position. Some of it's a bit try (evaluating new sensors) but I get paid to build 'robots' and code them. (Ok, I do mechatronics controls, but it's just a robot).I was going to post something along the lines of "Wait until you get your job and they're still looking for theirs." There is a demand for intelligent engineers. How many art history majors have you had help you at Walmart?

$60k after my first year wasn't too bad either. It's not high, and about av

New Topic:Top 5 reasons it sucks to hire the new crop of engineering students:5.) They expect the Statement of work you're asking for completion to be colorful, fun, and well written.4.) They can relate how their professor who cave them a B- is soooo much better at solving problems than you.3.) They are convinced working as a TA is real work.2.) Untraining the bad habits. I block instant messaging for a reason.1.) They want me to vote for Obama and incessantly drone on about how horrible life is in the US.

The books do tend to suck a lot more than non-engineering subjects. I suspect it's because engineers who are well-versed in their respective fields have trouble breaking down concepts for relative newcomers. It's not surprising for me to find an advanced concept wedged into the introductory chapters, and helpful beginners' explanations stuck curiously near the end of the book.

I cannot even begin to count the number of times where I've been doing my course readings, and completely not understanding a concept... and then running across a neat little paragraph explaining it all in a very concise way... in an unrelated chapter, half a book later.

I've been in school four years now, and I've had maybe 3 textbooks that I felt were truly helpful. The rest were just shameless wastes of my dollars and many trees. In their defense, all the information is in there somewhere, but rarely where you'd expect it to be.

There's surprising variability in text book quality. Some are written for scientific rigor, precision and conciseness at the expense of readability and accessibility. Others give a little on using the precise scientific terms at every turn, focusing instead on being approachable and accurate. For example, consider the following paragraph from my Thermodynamics book, introducing the 2nd law:

An object at an elevated temperature Ti placed in contact with atmospheric air at temprature T0 would eventually cool to the temperature of its much larger surroundings, as illustrated in Fig. 5.1a. In conformity with the conservation of energy principle the decrease in internal energy of the body would appear as an increase in the internal energy of the surroundings. The reverse process would not take place spontaneously, even though energy could be conserved: The internal energy of the surroundigns would not decrease spontaneously while the body warmed from T0 to its initial temperature.

That was from Fundamentals of Engineering Thermodynamics by Moran and Shapiro, 2nd Ed., p 160. I took this as an electrical engineering student many years ago (1995, I believe).

Some years later, my girlfriend at the time was studying toward her mechanical engineering degree. Her textbook (which I don't have handy), introduced the topic in what I thought was a much more approachable manner. Paraphrasing, it went something like this:

Consider, for example, a cup of hot coffee placed in a room at room temperature. As you would expect, the cup of coffee will eventually cool to the temperature of the room. In the process, it will transfer energy to the air in the room and energy is conserved. The reverse process, spontaneously heating the cup of coffee by drawing energy from the cool room would not occur, even though energy would still be conserved.

Both are engineering texts covering the same material, but with completely different treatments. Both cover the same range of topics, the same steam tables, the same cycles... everything. But, which text book is more accessible? Which text book is more effective? All I know is I had a really hard time in Thermo, whereas she picked it up very quickly. (I did manage to eke out a B, but she aced it as I recall.) Some of it's aptitude—we each picked our disciplines for a reason—but a big factor is accessibility. I found myself understanding Thermo much better than I had, just reading portions of her book.

And that's kinda how it goes. Some classes have impenetrable texts, others don't. These days, the wealth of online materials is astonishing compared to what I had when I was in school—1992 - 1996—and so that helps a lot.

The main thing is to have fun. If you're not having fun doing engineering, then maybe another line of work is better for you. Sure, the projects are challenging, the homework is difficult and often draining, but it's all worth it when you get to the other end and see things come to life. If that doesn't make it worth it to you, then perhaps it's not your field.

That's how I was with linear Algebra. It was all theory and I barely got a C. The I took Differential Equations, and was like "So THAT'S what all that shit was for". They really need to make courses show *why* you need to know the stuff, because it makes it easier to learn if it's not just all theory coming from the ether.

Engineering school was hell (U. of PR. Mayaguez [uprm.edu] for me). Most of my Circadian rhythm got shot to hell while studying there. Most of our professors spoke English as a second language, which was a hoot because so did we.

There was only one guy teaching intro to engineering materials, he was Indian, educated in England and had been teaching in Puerto Rico for over 20 years. The result? Handouts were written in british english (we were taught American English as a second language) yet he taught all of his classe

That's freaken arrogant and spoken from somebody who has no clue about reality. Sorry, but I am an ME (fourth generation) and studied at one of the better universities. Though I also have an artistic background (mother is an artist, father is an engineer).

You really think Math, Science and Engineering students can make better films? BS! Try it, please I dare you to. I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.

I graduated 15 years ago, and if there is one thing I have learned is that I wish engineering/math/science students were not so dammed arrogant!

You really think Math, Science and Engineering students can make better films?

It depends on the definition of "better." Some of Hollywood's most influential directors, from Stanley Kubrick to Jim Cameron, were/are hardcore engineering geeks. But most movies made by geeks end up being made for geeks... more like Primer, in other words, than The Terminator.

It would suck if nerdhood was the only point of view represented in the film industry.

I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.

If you're talking about the "looks like 5 minute art" being the modern variety, then I must call shenanigans on you. Modern art is bollocks.

Disclaimer: I'm not an artist. What I know about art you could fit in a thimble. But, I'm an engineer and scientist, and I have tested this. Albeit accidentally.

Over a dozen years ago I went to the Met in NYC with a girlfriend. At the time I had long hair, was only slightly balding, and wore military clothing with lots of pins all over it. I looked eccentric. I looked...like what you'd think of when you think "artist".

So we're at the Met. And to make my SO laugh, I start doing my best "LA Story" impression on the modern art display. I was a little louder than I should have been (I blame the extra-fun Manhattan bars for this). Other people could hear me - I didn't know this. I began spouting nonsense.

"It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy."
"It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?"
"You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving."

And so on.

What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling. When I turned around and saw a half a dozen people following me around, I knew I had learned something important:

knew I had learned something important:
Art, modern art anyways - is a load of rubbish.

No, what you learned was that a lot of people who wander around who look at modern art are pretentious and know nothing about art and just want to impress their girlfriends who took them to the met by following and agreeing with the artsy looking people.

No, what you learned was that a lot of people who wander around who look at modern art are pretentious and know nothing about art and just want to impress their girlfriends who took them to the met by following and agreeing with the artsy looking people.

My girlfriend was by my side when I started my routine. We were alone at the time. Other people wandered in...maybe 5 or 6. They wanted to see what I was talking about. I did my bit on 3 or 4 paintings, thinking my girlfriend was beside me. What she did was take two steps back and watch.

Have to agree with techpawn. You only learned something about those people, not modern art itself. There are a number of "schools" of MA; some are drek, some are quite deep and friggin' hard to accomplish.

It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy.
It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?
You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving.
I think you're missing the fundamental point of modern art. Modern art is technically more accessible because there are no boundaries. Right - a modern painting can take considerably less time than a photo-realistic or impressionistic piece of art, but that's part of the beauty of it.

A kid smearing finger-paint has no boundaries (literally--ask any mother about all the places the paint gets to), works quickly, and does it with ease and joy, exploring very basic aspects of vision. I propose we populate modern art galleries with children's finger paintings instead of having to pay ridiculous sums to all these grown-ups doing finger painting.

Assuming you're an engineer, you've probably proven one of the article's points -- despite a lack of any art education you managed to produce a quite acceptable piece of extemporaneous performance art. At a famous NY museum, no less. Most artists go their entire career without a NY museum show -- maybe you picked the wrong career:-)

What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling.

Your mind reading abilities are impressive.

Did I ever tell you about the time that I went out to the Met and saw some guy doing his best Steve Martin impression in front of the modern art display? He was clearly babbling about nothing in particular but I was entertained by his display of street theatre. I smiled and nodded when he quoted a line from 'LA Story' and made no effort to move away when I saw that we were taking the same path through the museum. The funny thing is that I never did figure out whether he was trying to make some sort of wry criticism of artists who try to make a virtue out of inaccessibility or if he really was just a drunken lout who had no idea what he was looking at and wanted to be funny for his girlfriend.

But I was reminded of something important:

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Lots of people have no idea how gravitation works but that doesn't keep them from sticking to the ground.

About 2 years ago, I was in London and everybody told me that I simply *must* visit the Tate Modern (http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/) to see the Kandinsky exhibit (http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kandinsky/). Being an American in London, the dollar wasn't worth anything, and so when I went to see this exhibit it was 10 pounds. A fair chunk of money for what was about 4 rooms of paintings. But hey, it was London, and of course everybody said you had to go to see the Kandinsky exhibit.

Well, from a historic standpoint, Kandinsky is interesting. He "invented" abstract art. But he was nuts. Crazy. Bonkers. No two ways around it. He has what I'd charitably describe as a handful of interesting and challenging pieces. The rest is just a painting by a crazy person. And after you look at a wall of it, you're tired of it. You're tired of the guy. And you're mostly sorry that you paid all that money to look at the splatterings of a madman.

Well, I finally looked around and said very loudly "This stuff is crap. And everybody pretending to like this stuff is only doing it because you're *supposed* to say everything this guy did was genius. It's just the ravings of a madman". Everyone turned around and gave me an evil eye.

Except the guards. They all started clapping.

I quickly high-tailed it out of there before I got pelted with wine and brie, but it's true.

And yes, I'm a computer guy, but I'm also an artist (musical). But you don't have to be an artist to call B.S. on this sort of nonsense. And most art... modern or not, really *is* crap.

No it's not. The real artists aren't hanging around bars. These guys we're probably just like you: Pretending. The real artists are AT HOME doing something useful. But you did make a good point. There are a lot of people who like pretending. I see them all the time and GOOD GOD I would have hated your guts - no offense - if I had seen you at that bar.

None taken. But I must clarify one point. I was not pretending to be anything. I was mistaken for something, but that was hardly my fault. I've always been me. Even though I did have a vaguely-trendy-at-one-time army jacket with junk on it. A closer inspection of the jacket would have revealed that most of the stuff was Battletech patches anyways. I did it as a nod to my being an engineer and basically decked myself out as a house Steiner mech technician. It did somewhat look like what other people were doing, but it wasn't.

I graduated 15 years ago, and if there is one thing I have learned is that I wish engineering/math/science students were not so dammed arrogant!

That is pretty funny, and accurate, but then again it was hard not to be at times.

When I was studying ChemE I had a journalism student as a room mate. When he wasn't stoned (which wasn't often) he'd talk alot of shit about how superior they were, in their core subjects and in the grand scheme of things, of course when it came time for the assessment exams he'd eat alot of crow when the Engineering school would spank the Journalism school on all portions of the test.

In the end it all doesn't really matter, just being smart has little to do with being good at something.

True, but your reply is also arrogant. People can be talented in a variety of areas, and may choose what to study based upon which one they think will lead to a better career. At my college they had to restrict a certain number of plays per year to just drama students, otherwise none of them would be cast in any of the student plays. The other majors contained a fair number of dramatically talented people, who were the leads in their school plays/musicals, but decided there was a better chance at making a l

The students I went to school with were, for the most part, arrogant, stuck-up, and useless. One guy said, "It's nice that there are stupid people - otherwise we'd have to scrub toilets."

I pointed out that the janitor worked part-time, was a union employee, and probably got paid about 50k a year. (For part-time, remember?) The janitor was a nice guy, actually, and he was aware that most people thought of him as a "non-entity."

I've always felt that the other subjects are just as hard as Engineering to complete - they just require a different mindset. Yes, some people can game the system to get a bunch of slacktastic courses. That's true for 1st year, for certain. It's not true for later years. Sure, second year math has a 70% failure rate. I'm sure that there's some musical course or art appreciation course that's just as tricky. What about Ethical matrices for solving very difficult situations? Or something else that I'm not aware of because I didn't take 4th year A&S electives? University and College are hard, no matter what degree you try to attain. Engineering isn't some elite cadre of the Brainiacs.

Other students despised me because I invented things and didn't bother going for the 9.0 average. (I realized that I could do half the work and get a nice B average.) One of my friends said "they hate you because you don't give a FUCK. Not at all. It's all they care about, and you're still here, and you don't give a FUCK. It's hilarious."

I also realized that what we learn at school has NOTHING TO DO WITH ENGINEERING. IEEE taught me that with a phrase akin to, "It's hard for people who have entered the workforce to pursue a Master's Degree, because they haven't used the theories or mathematics since graduation."

I don't paint. I can't think of what I'd make. (Although I can put a fresh coat of latex on a wall with the best of them.;) ) I can play a musical instrument quite well (20 years) and I can sing (8 years in a classical choir).

I was a music major before I went into Comp Sci, and wound up with degrees in both.

The music major was far more time-intensive. Music majors regularly took 21-24 credits while the "libbies" would complain at 16. And, those credits were not "dense" time-wise, I'd frequently have 3 or 4 different performance groups for 3 hours a week each, yet only get one credit for each. You'd have to practice 2 or 3 hours a day to acheive your instrumental proficiency, and I wasn't even a performance major.

Why does that matter? They're getting better grades in film classes. Being mad that students in film classes have an easier time getting high marks than students in engineering classes makes about as much sense as being mad that students in 2nd grade have an easier time getting high marks than students in engineering classes.

This disparity is corrected for in the real world - try getting a job with a 4.0 film degree vs. a 3.0 engineering degree. You'll get any job the film degree candidate can get, with the possible exception of jobs where the film degree's GPA doesn't matter (actual film jobs, where they are evaluated primarily on their portfolio of work, an area where anyone who actually has any talent in film is going to kick your (or my) sorry engineering ass.)

More generally, if you really feel that someone else is getting a better deal than you, stop bitching about it and go do what they're doing! Enroll in the film program, get your easy A's, finish college with a 4.0 in your major, and enjoy your years of paying off your student loans while working as a car salesman/insurance agent/whatever else Liberal Arts majors do to actually feed themselves when you could have gotten that same job not going to school at all!

You have to understand what a Liberal Arts major is. For a very select few people, it's a stepping stone to being a professor, or research, or something else at the top of the field. For the vast majority however, a liberal arts degree is an opportunity to do some partying, find a mate, and prove that you're able to show up on time. So yeah, you can get a 4.0 liberal arts degree much easier than you can get an engineering degree, but you won't be able to be an engineer with one!

A significant portion of education is taxpayer funded. Why should we spend money to support liberal arts programs with low standards? All degree programs should require approximately the same amount of effort. I'd rather have education be more affordable and more difficult.

I have to agree with that; what pisses me right off is the fact that engineering and medical degrees are the most expensive to get (mine cost 5x what the same arts degree would have cost over the same amount study units) yet a lot of arts students just bum around on the dole or low income jobs and never earn enough to have to pay back their debts.

Making education more affordable and making people pay up front is a good start. Making the coursework harder in the "arts" degrees might discourage those who just want to continue to get the extra education allowance in their unemployment packet each week.

If I may recall an anecdote from my days studying engineering some 12 years ago (wow I feel old). I recall sitting on a bus waiting for it to depart the uni when two pretty young arts students climbed on and sat directly behind me. They were talking about how hard their course was and how they had to study for all these hours in the week and it was just impossible to find the time. One asked the other what the worst thing was and she said "I have four hours of lectures in a week and need to do about 4 hours of work at home. One day I even have to get here by 11AM.". She was actually baffled how anyone could seriously do 8 hours of work in a week and still fit in the other things like having a life.

Conversely most engineering students do around 30-40 hours at the school. The good ones use the dead time between classes to keep up with the workload but even they probably do another 10 hours out of school to keep up. Most of us had to fit in part time jobs to pay the bills; those engineering books aren't cheap and the library doesn't carry hundreds of copies like they do with a lot of the artsy books. Add into that a partner and some recreation time to keep you sane and you can imagine the workload.

Engineers are supposed to be creative people. Engineering is the point where theoretical science crosses into practical reality. You're meant to be finding new and practical ways to do things. Your uni days lay the groundwork. The reason lecturers seem to be not very helpful is they are trying to teach you the Engineer-think; try now, get a feel for it, ask for help when I know what I need help with. I found surprising help with lecturers when I'd first tried a problem and got some way into it before asking for help. Others would walk in and say "but it's different from the examples in the book" and they would be met with a very agitated professor.

Engineering isn't an easy field to get into. As others have said it's damn boring when you get here unless you are really into it too. Grades are low because the work is hard. Want better grades? Work hard and understand the material! Rote learning doesn't cut it with engineers. We don't like parrots because parrots make a lot of noise without actually contributing anything useful.

It doesn't matter what grade a liberal arts student gets. If his/her book/movie/poem is shit, what do I care? If the Civil Engineer that designed some bridge barely passed uni (or had good grades because the work was easy) then all sorts of bad things could happen.

One more thing that bothers me about engineering in general is that there aren't as many (good) jobs as there are course places. Sure, there are places who are looking for an engineer but usually they want shit kickers rather than engineers. A lot of real engineering work is being outsourced to places like India where there are a lot of very talented people (I met a few Indian engineers one time and was surprisingly impressed with their skills) willing to work for practically peanuts.

I'm personally not working in my trained field. I'm an electronic engineer who now spends most of his days writing (mostly embedded) software. I've picked up what I need to through a combination of mentors, classes and generally just doing it and I could have done that without time and costs of a four year degree hanging over me. That bothers me a little because I'd love to be doing my preferred line of work; there's just no money in it because a lot of it is outsourced now except for the defence industry.

You have to understand what a Liberal Arts major is. For a very select few people, it's a stepping stone to being a professor, or research, or something else at the top of the field. For the vast majority however, a liberal arts degree is an opportunity to do some partying, find a mate, and prove that you're able to show up on time.

For a long time, and for many still today, an arts major (not just liberal arts, some of the above posters were talking about making art which is much more associated with fine arts degree) was "a rich person's education." Not too many rich people get engineering degrees, because, for most, designing circuits or something isn't as fun as discussing philosophy or poetry.

As an aside, I hope making money isn't the only reason people choose to go into an engineering program. If that's the case, you would probably be much better off getting a business degree, or furthering your education to medical or law school, and I'm sure anyone who can get an engineering degree is sharp enough to pass medical school. You must expect to derive pleasure from doing engineering itself. [For a good number of girls in university, they'd probably maximise their income by forgetting about education and be prostitutes and pornographic actors (what was that Eliot Spitzer prostitute making, $5000/hour? There's some number of girls just as good-looking as her in every university), but I don't think maximising their income is their only interest -- that's an argument against people who say that money is everything, or nearly everything -- would they suggest the same to their daughters?]

For a good number of girls in university, they'd probably maximise their income by forgetting about education and be prostitutes and pornographic actors (what was that Eliot Spitzer prostitute making, $5000/hour?

I'm sure you've heard that "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...". Well with 1 bazillion liberal arts major's around there are sure to be a few good ones. The vast majority of LA students do not get to work in the field they studied. There are so many LA grads that half the people flipping burgers have one.

So, can you get a good job with Liberal Arts? Of course. Many have and will, but your odds aren't good.

Given the ease with which you made up and propagated that bullshit, there's a good chance you have or are on your way to having a BA.

But lets try getting you to provide some real information.

List for us World Leaders and CEOs who only have a Bachelor of Arts degree. I'm sure there are a couple. Now figure out (if you ever learned how to do this) the percentage of CEOs and World Leaders (or even members of congress) who just have Bachelor of Arts degrees. To keep the problem manageable, you might consider only looking at Fortune-50, -100, or -500 companies.

So out of the top 10, you have four engineers, four business/finance, and one applied math guy.

*ZERO* Liberal Arts majors. Maybe we can give you one out of 10 with credit for the math guy, even though it was APPLIED math.

So for CEOs, looks like engineers kick liberal arts major ass. For Heads of State, I think you'll find that the vast majority of Heads of State have MBAs or JDs (or BLs) in developed nations, or are the children of political families in lesser-developed nations, or are former warlords in even less developed nations.

But, with a statement as stupid as "ALL of the heads of state in the world today are, or can be considered Liberal Arts majors", (ALL? Really? Don't make it hard to be proven wrong or anything...) I doubt you're going to have much to say here, even if you did use your Liberal Arts training to insert your 'cover my don't know anything ass' statement of "or can be considered". Can be considered? Either they have liberal arts degrees or they don't!

It must really gall you how you just got trounced by an engineer though.

Bush believes in his convictions. To the point that he admitted God told him to do what he did. I kind of like the willing to change their mind when presented with evidence to the contrary scientific type. Forget the bullheaded charging I am going to get this done my way type.

What might be truly refreshing though is to have a politician who simply looks at the American People and the future of the American People and does what is right by those terms. I would love to learn how it feels to have a President like that.

I still don't understand why you're so convinced the average CS major could be making great art. The only argument anyone seems to be making for that claim is that James Cameron has an engineering degree (which isn't even true) and that therefore every Java-mangling halfwit could also make Titanic.

The average CS major probably couldn't be making great art. But neither can the average film student. IMO, the average CS major could get through an undergraduate film curriculum a lot easier than the average fi

Typical science snobbery. Truth be told, some liberal arts people are quite accomplished in their fields, and do quality work that would be extremely to duplicate without a similar level of raw talent and time commitment.

The problem is not those people. The problem is that those people are able to coast to an amazing degree because the grading system favors the slackers who take those classes because they don't want to work.

So the real problem is twofold:

One, the truly excellent students aren't getting the sort of challenge that would allow them to hone their abilities to their limits.

Two, the quality of the whole discipline is being diluted by a bunch of crappy students doing mediocre work for a grade.

I witnessed this in liberal arts classes, I also witnessed it in some CS classes, where incompetent coders could pass the class based solely on the curve and their ability to parrot theory on the exams. Literally. I was in a class where a programming assignment's average grade was 7 out of 100.

That is the most ridiculous thing I've read on slashdot in a long time. There are good engineering professors at every respectable university grading on a curve. Proving people can fail accomplishes nothing, while teaching them something accomplishes the task; training them to double check their work, learn from their mistakes, and pay attention to what they're doing.

No one remembers everything, and expecting the majority of the population (hate to say it but not all engineering students can be above average intelligence) to be above average is futile.

Are you nuts? If you're correct, does that mean I should throw out my degree from the Rutgers University School of Engineering [rutgers.edu]? I spent a significant amount of time in both the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering departments and close to 100% of my professors used a curve. The concept of using the median grade in a class as a "C" or so and using standard deviations as incremental grade levels is pretty standard. It also means that when the median is h

No one who has an opinion worth a damn will ever look at a Liberal Arts major with a 3.8 and think it's equivalent to a 3.8 in chemical engineering.

The clerks handling academic scholarships do.

There are states that offer scholarships that require one maintains their GPA above a certain level. While the types of students who would earn an academic scholarship aren't the types that would switch to a relatively easy Liberal Arts major to maintain the scholarship, it is commonplace to see students taking LA classes to pad their grades and maintain scholarships. This incentive to take irrelevant (but easy!) classes should not exist.

As an engineering student that took a film class as an elective I can attest to that! I would write papers that had A's while the students to the left and right of me earned C's. My paper comparing Hidden Fortress to Star Wars scored especially well. Alfred Hitchcock was an Engineering student BTW.

As an engineering student that reads the internet I can attest that I (typically) can write posts that actually follow most rules of English. Lose vs loose, break vs brake, etc. I couldn't imagine what grade I'd get on a lab report if I turned in stuff with those mistakes. Then I come to find out that a majority of those posters (Fark, Slashdot, other forums I'm on) ARE collage[sic] educated, it just baffles me that some of these people made it out of middle school not knowing the difference.

We learned to write well as a second nature, we then had to add actual content on top of that. Every elective class I took that required a paper I got a 'Excellent paper' and I didn't even "try". People in the class around me were nitpicking with "Can it be 2 pages double spaced, can I use 14 pt font, etc" to try and get theirs done. By time I had my thoughts on the paper I could easily have twice the 'length' requirements without any additional cheating. And my peers in these courses were people who might one day go on to TEACH this.

Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, the son of Shirley, an artist and nurse, and Phillip Cameron, an electrical engineer.[2] He grew up in Chippawa, Ontario and graduated from Stamford Collegiate in Niagara falls , and in 1971 his family moved to Brea, California. There he studied physics and English at California State University, Fullerton, but his passion for filmmaking would draw him to the film archive of UCLA at every opportunity. After dropping

"Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores." For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. If you want to complain about your education, this is your chance."

That's true in school and real life kid. I'd like to tell you life is fair... But then I'd be lying and in a management position.

Then you're looking at the wrong kinds of companies. A good engineering company will hire smart engineers, not people who are good at marketing themselves. I'd never want to work somewhere where engineers are selected by their marketing talents.

Sure, but how do you figure out which engineers are smart and which ones aren't? The answer is usually one of the following:

1. Their CV/resume and interviews - self-marketing
2. Hearing about their work from somewhere else - getting someone else to market you

The entire point of marketing is to show people that you have a product to sell - it's up to them to determine whether or not it's worth buying. No product, no sale. Crappy product, initial sale, but quickly thrown out of the company.

What I got from my CS degree is an understanding of how it all works......I already knew HOW to program (years of BASIC and PASCAL before college) and I didn't learn anything about real world projects, but because of my CS degree, I understood why languages are written the way they are (good old BNF's) and the different levels of the OSI model and algorithms (was I the only one who corrolated the O-face from Office Space with the face someone makes as they try to grasp Big-O notation during their first Algorithms class?) and, etc. None of it applies directly to what I do today, but because of that understanding, I solve problems quicker and I can communicate to the groups that I need to interact with (DBA's, Network Ops, etc.) in their own terms.

I came into college being pretty good at C++, VB, and having installed Linux a few times, but I didn't know a thing. Let me stand up for the typical CS degree.

Computer org was a fantastic class. So was Physics I and II. So were my software engineering classes. And, I'd say the same for numerical methods.

They all taught me something. Computer org inspired me to seek the root of a problem. It gave a view of how computers actually work, something I lacked before the class despite knowing how plow around an OS and assemble the latest PC. It taught me logic, and the difference between a megabit and a megabyte; skills that I've used in every tech job, weather it's development or Unix administration.

Physics I and II taught me the scientific method. This was my most important lesson. That it takes a long time, and lots of hard work to really KNOW something. That if you can't repeat something with relative certainty, it's meaningless.. it's not the real problem. That in order to solve hard things, you need patience, a variety of knowledge to draw from, and resolve. It taught me to RTFM also. It was the first class where I learned the real value of reference material.

Software engineering taught me to draw a damn flowchart and understand the problem and my planned solution before I start coding. 2nd most valuable lesson from college. So many self taught CS people, they stunningly still don't get this.

Numerical methods taught me that across all languages, the tools are largely the same. I learned how to translate a math problem into procedural code. I've seen people that can't devise the code to draw a window in the middle of the screen. It's not something we went over in the FORTRAN, but I'm sure I know how to instantly solve it thanks to the style of thinking instilled in me by that class.

I'm in a mechanical engineering degree. In the past 10 years, fewer than 10 people have recieved 4.0 gpas. It is ridiculously difficult. The classes are ridiculously difficult. However, by the time I graduate RIT I'll know this stuff so well..
I spent all weekend on 3 problems. what the heck! lol It takes me two hours to write a decent 10 page paper, it takes me 10 hours to answer 1 math problem. I definitely agree, other fields have inflated gpas, but you know what, I know a hell of a lot more than someone with an inflated grade, and that makes me proud.

It all depends on if they have some family in with a business somewhere that would let them get dumped into management or if they're going to be asking "do you want fries with that"? Life is unfair like that. The good thing about an engineering degree is that you're almost guaranteed to be able to find a job somewhere. Engineers have useful skills that companies are looking for. Someone who majors in Women's studies and gets all As is going to have a tough time finding work unless they have a network already in place.

One gets the impression that the author of the article doesn't particularly like math though. I've gotta say he should probably consider switching majors now, because it's not going to be any better after he graduates if he continues on with the engineering degree. There is a lot of math in his classes because there will be a lot of math in his job in the real world with that degree.

Also, he has a point about the textbooks sucking. A lot of them are written by engineers and really do suck. I recommend not missing any classes and try to correlate what the professor teaches with the book as much as possible. A lot of the time those seemingly incomprehensible sections will actually be fairly simple once the professor explains it, but be warned that some professors are not above pulling test material straight from the book, so you better understand how the author thinks too.

Until you realize that, historically anyways, higher education is *not* vocational training. Higher education is meant to do exactly that - educate, in any subject that might tickle the learner's interests. Vocational training belongs in trade school - and I bet most engineers have too big of an ego to go to the same school as the mechanics and the plumbers.

Disclaimer: I am an engineer, but I'm routinely frustrated with how our kind tend to think we're better than everyone else, simply because we have a starting salary higher than most other degrees (note that I said starting, this relationship doesn't hold as time goes on).

That's something that most of my (intelligent and well educated) male friends would say in the company of other males to sound funny.

I'm sure if we knew the guy personally it might be "no shock to anyone that he flunked out", but just reading that sentence didn't dumbfound me or cause me to assume that the guy is an idiot. I could picture just about any male saying that in the right context. I mean, what... if we're geeks we're not allowed to think that women are attractive and want to see more of them around us ? At worst it's sexist if said in the wrong context. Certainly does not automatically denote lack of intelligence.

"Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films," writes Rower. "Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores."

Who cares? You're not competing against film majors for fellowships, scholarships, graduate programs and jobs. You're competing against other engineering majors. And honestly, the vast majority of engineering majors seem to have greatly exaggerated notions of their own brilliance; engineering profs do give out As, if you're not making them maybe you're not quite as smart as you think you are.

I think the only majors with a higher general opinion of themselves are philosophy majors.

I think the only majors with a higher general opinion of themselves are philosophy majors.

Now that all depends on how we define one's ability to form a general opinion. For more information read my paper for Philosophy 416, "Our ability to form opinions, real or not." It's clearly an excellent paper, I got an A++++. I'm right because I'm smarter than you are, I have a 4.83 GPA.

The point is that grades are effectively meaningless; if you base your happiness around an arbitrary letter (like the subby apparently did) then you're going to end up envying people whose arbitrary letter is higher, rather than experiencing envy for any sort of rational reason.

I honestly never gave a damn about my grades. You can waste time cramming trivia and useless knowledge to ace the tests, but the true measure of your skills is in the mastery of the material, and the ability to put it to work in the real world.

That being said, I almost always experienced more satisfaction from a difficult C than an easy A. Where is the triumph when victory is but a foregone conclusion?

Also, one writes "book reports" in fifth grade, not in any semi-respectable university. One gets the impression Aaron Rowe never actually took a humanities class beyond perhaps the most ludicrous one he could find to satisfy a requirement. Does he think English majors make dioramas, also?

There is a general impression on Slashdot among the more ignorant that humanities classes are a joke. I think a lot of it is based on the fact that, yes, introductory humanities classes, aimed at people just out of high school, tend to not be especially difficult. It's more likely that a science or engineering major will take these classes than the upper level ones. Taking an upper level philosophy or linguistics or history course (or even a low-level classics course) would probably disabuse them of the notion.

Also, a lot of the science/engineering types base their opinion of humanities classes not on any firsthand knowledge but rather on third-hand accounts of what humanities classes may be, filtered through jokes, anecdotes, and misinterpretations of what some humanities professor might have said. A lot of it is alien to the engineering major; a humanities class structure is not about being told what is true and retaining it, it's about being given a lot of (oftentimes conflicting) information and synthesizing it.

But I look forward to a day when engineering, science, and humanities majors can put aside their differences, come together in a spirit of unity, and make fun of business majors.

I had a similar problem with several of my CS professors (I was a CS major.)
I complained to my adviser I couldn't understand them, but he said that I should basically be more sympathetic since they probably
had a tough time understanding me as well. I was shocked by this; I'm the student... if I don't
understand what the prof is saying, I fail. Plus, I'm PAYING FOR THIS CLASS. A LOT!!

One of the things that always pissed me off about academia is the sense of entitlement the professors have.

In my experience, engineering school isn't geared specifically for content. It's designed to teach you some basics (electronics, math, logic, assembly language in my case), and everything done above and beyond that was designed to teach you how to solve problems. I may not know how to build an amplifier anymore, but I do know how to build a circuit, simulate it, how to adjust properties, and develop an answer.

I think the same thing goes with Calculus - Everything you did in math was done to give you the 'aha' moment that occurs when you learn derrivatives. You suffered endlessly computing deltas manually, but then you learned what a derivative is, and all of a sudden your world changed. There are other ways to solve problems. And when you realized that, then your approach to math suddenly changed - it's not about slogging through a procedure to get the answer, but to look at problems and see new ways of solving them.

The importance of college isn't what you learn there. It's whether you learn HOW to learn.

I agree. Even within college this became quite apparent.Going along with your calculus example, I did well enough in the calculus courses I took, but I still didn't get the big picture. Until I got to more advanced physics courses (I was a physics major), where I had to actually apply calculus as a tool to do the physics. Then calculus suddenly made sense.

Same with linear algebra, the whole concept of an eigenvalue, or why diagonalization is useful, didn't make any sense to me, and just seemed to be arbi

We designed and built Potato Guns, for credit, in an upper level engineering class. In another we designed and built autonomous Lego robots. Engineering classes==awesome. I just wish I could afford to go back and take more now.

I have a lot of friends who were in Engineering when I was an undergrad. The biggest complaint that they seemed to have was that they felt like they were just being fed equations and not taught to think for themselves. The second they came across a problem that was a slight deviation from the questions mentioned in class or from the textbook, they had some trouble, because the underlying theory was lacking. I suppose it's no surprise that the students who do the best in math or programming competitions like Putnam or ACM are typically under the math faculty. Don't get me wrong, I know lots of brilliant engineering graduates, but they often feel a little cheated.

It's for this reason why I chose Computer Science, which is a math-based program at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Although I can't recite as many equations from memory as my engineering colleagues, I know how derive them, and am able to handle curveballs that come by way because I developed logical thinking. As a plus, I was able to get a minor in physics with a specialization in quantum mechanics with the extra freedom in courses I had.

I'd really like to see real math and theory return to engineering. Some formula-feeding might need to be dropped, but a lot of that stuff isn't useful in the workplace anyway.

I'd agree with all the points, but in the end, most of them should be expected. After leaving engineering for art (or maybe while leaving.. since a had a couple year transition), I realized one of the things I hated so much about it was how "strict" engineering is. In the sense that, if you're given a problem to solve, there's only one correct answer, and only one (or maybe 2) correct ways to arrive at that answer. If you take an art class (or a writing class, as they use the example of writing papers), when you're given a problem to solve, there's a nearly infinite number of correct answers. You can do some of your own thinking. Even an answer that one person feels is completely wrong could actually be correct and get a good grade.. it's much more subjective. The freedom to break the rules and think outside the box is one of the reasons I left engineering. That, and I didn't want some little mistake in a calculation to cause a catastrophic structural failure of some sorts that led to the death of innocent civilians...

Write a short story. Write a slightly longer story. Write the story in rhyming verse. Write a non-fictional story. Write this story. Write that story. Writing assignments look boring to me. However, I saw challenges and differences in the engineering stuff I did. Maybe this guy is just ignorant of the necessary knowledge to see those differences.

Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades

Why chose a major you have to work for where you can find correct answers, when you can have one where you just have to BS enough that the teacher can't tell the difference between BS and insight? Clearly, you should just chose you major based on your possible GPA. I know they hire CEOs based on what their GPA was 30+ years ago.

Dearth of Quality Counseling

Really? I had some wicked smart professors who could help with this. And I heard plenty from other students who thought this kind of thing about their non-engineering courses. I smell an anecdote.

Professors are Rarely Encouraging

I had encouraging professors. I had interesting professors. I also had boring professors. Why is that every Engineering professor is a stodgy old bore, while the Lit students get class after class of Dead Poet's Society teachers? Oh, that's right, they don't. Besides, maybe if you were interested in the material instead of in it for the $$$, you wouldn't have this problem. You've never seen a teacher engage some students who are interested in the subject, while called terrible by the students who didn't care about the subject? I've seen that since at least middle school.

Awful Textbooks

My Literature textbooks weren't very good at all. I've seen history books that were a joke. There were almost no good textbooks. Blame the publishers, blame the teachers requiring their own text book, blame the difficulty of writing a good one. Again, Engineering shouldn't be singled out

I call blog spam on this. You notice it's just a blog entry, not a real story at Wired.

Bad professors were a big problem for me. I attended MIT and a state school. Most courses, especially on the bottom rungs, were taught much better at the state school. MIT, like many engineering schools, focuses on its professors' research more than their teaching skills. I failed MIT's differential equations course three times, yet earned an A at the state school. Did diff eq change sometime in the three intervening years, or the 35 miles from one school to the next?

Bad textbooks often follow from bad professors. Beware especially the profs who insist upon using their self-written textbook. That goes double for the ones which can't get the book published, and in turn force you to buy a crappy GBC-bound xerox from the campus duplication center.

I never had a good counselor. Good counselors can give you career advice. My counselors were already-overworked professors clamoring for tenure; not only did they lack the insight a good counselor could provide, but they also lacked much time.

I would not have the non-inflated grades any other way. I also don't trust grades to be a very good diagnostic figure for a student's effort, aptitude, or potential.

And as for homework... engineering is ingenuity (same root word), rooted in math and reality (which we usually call "physics"). The math bears repetition. It's not that I liked doing math exercises all the time, but now that I am on the other side, I fully appreciate its necessity. There were math concepts which I did not totally grasp until I had hammered on them for years.

I speak to a retired professor every week. He said that one of his biggest makes was trying to be a good teacher. He put a lot of time and effort into teaching and as a result he didn't manage to publish many papers. After almost losing his job because of this (cutbacks target those with the least number of papers first), he learnt that students come last.

This is nothing new. I got a ME degree from UCONN in the early 80's. My first class had a professor who barely spoke English. His first quote was "I teach you Engineering, You teach me Engrish". His second line (in broken English) was the classic "Look to your left, look to your right. Neither will be with you when you graduate" We assumed he meant ONE of them won't be there, but he turned out to be correct. 2/3 of the entry class flunked out or transferred to PolySci or some other squishy humanity degree. I graduated with a 2.7 cumulative - with a 3.5 cumulative in my non-engineering classes. My roommate was a ChemE who went to PolySci - he graduated with a 3.5... studied about half as much as I did. I ended up going to graduate school because the smarmy recruiters didn't think a B- average was good enough to be a real engineer... Got an MBA in IT and Finance... never looked back. It's too bad because I would have made a pretty good engineer - actually am a "Software Engineer" now... Bottom line is that the grade inflation that took hold of all the other disciplines never translated to the engineering schools... So even though my degree was probably 4 times harder to get, it didn't count for squat due to the costs of inflation. And now America is SCREAMING for more engineers...

From what I've seen lately, the hype over web technologies and our service-based economy has degraded the salaries of engineers relative to other professions, and the inflation of our currency.

This is why companies seem to like mediocre scholars, because they can buy them cheaper, throw a bunch of them at a problem and solve it more cheaply than having superstars. They like disposable employees because they never get slowed down when someone quits, leaves, goes into rehab or dies.

Colleges know this, and so they're relaxing standards and caring less about who makes it through, because they're more interested in churning out the inventors of the next FaceBook(tm).

It does NOT suck to be an engineering student. If - and here's the big part - if you like engineering. If you're in this because you parents told you to do it, or because you think there's big money in it - there's the door and don't let it hit you in the ass.

Complaining about how engineering is hard work is like someone studying to be a proctologist and coming home from the first day at work and complaining about all the assholes. How could you possibly be surprised by this? Anything that requires you to learn differential equations is going to be a little taxing.

As for myself, I loved being an engineering student. Having a building full of PhDs that would explain anything, absolutely anything to me ROCKED. I miss college.

In fact, you only needed about 8 credit hours of extra engineering classes to graduate out of the electives. I graduated with over 35. Took extra classes in antenna design, digital number theory, non-linear controls...you name it. I loved it all and dearly miss college.

On the flip side, you know what actually does suck? A mortgage. That's what.

While slackers may be able to skate by in certain courses, they will not get A's forever and despite what our country's leadership might suggest, slackers generally are not that successful in their careers. Bright students, on the other hand, generally end up extremely well after the dust settles. So hang in there, my bright bretheren!

The trouble with studying engineering today is that it used to pay better. In 1970, the IEEE reported that electrical engineers and lawyers were making about the same salaries.

I had a quite good undergraduate engineering education. What sucked was going through Stanford CS for a Master's in the mid-1980s. I went through just as it was becoming clear that expert systems weren't going to lead to strong AI, but many on the faculty didn't want to admit it. Yet the expert systems people were still in charge. This was just as the "AI Winter" was starting, and the first-round AI startups were going bust. The whole experience was disappointing. I was fed way too much bullshit, and I knew it at the time. I have the Stanford diploma, but as an educational experience, it sucked.

Stanford finally had to transfer computer science from Arts and Sciences to Engineering and put in adult supervision. It's much improved now.

Do you want to be engineer? If the answer is not hell yes, with all my heart and soul, and I know that is more work than any other major, and I have building robots since I was 5, and I love basements, then run away, quickly. College is not high school where the students smell fear on a teacher and then bully grades out of them. Professor smell fear on freshmen, then fail them before the first week is out. This is reality. In general there are many more qualified engineering students than are needed, and no prof wants to waste time with a dumkompf. Especially those students who think that engineering to too hard should choose another major.

Did you get in a state school with automatic admission? If you did not get into the school though a competitive process, if you are not at the to 20% of the exams, if you think that you are hot stuff just because you managed to eek at the top 10% of you little pond does not mean you are qualified for the privilege of engineering school, or at least not a real one.

Do you like to read and do math? Again, if the answer is not yes, with all my heart, that is all I ever do, then run away fast. This does not mean that you can't drink and party and be a college kid. Some one the highest educational areas also sell the greatest amount of alcohol. But there must be a balance. I recall our class complaining to an engineering teacher who came into our midterm wearing a t-shirt from a concert held the previous night. We all complained why he got to go and we had to study. He said we could have gone if we had not waited to the last minute to study.

Can you do work without supervision? This is not high school. No one is going to beg you to do work. No one wants to hear your excuses that you use to not do work. The prof is not going to do all the work for you. You might need to do all the learning yourself if you get a bad prof. That is life. Class time is at most 20% of the time you will spend learning the subject, so the prof is at most a guide to the important bits. The textbook is one resource. Motivated students who will become engineers are able to find other resources, and copy each others homework to help understand important topics.

Are you, or have you ever been, a whiner. No engineering firm wants a whiner. No intelligent person who has a choice of where to work wants to work with whiners. Nearly every other social malady is acceptable. Be arrogant, rude, or even borderline psychotic. Be a managed druggy. By if you are whiner, don't waste you time in engineering. No one cares.

And one more thing. A Ti Silver Edition is not a real calculator. It is a toy given to kids who can't do math to keep them busy during math class. I know the 'plus' makes it seem like a real calculator, but it is not. It is most useful for passing notes. Get and HP.

I remember my engineering program in college. It was loaded with a bunch of student that often complained about the instructors, the program, and the lack of leniency. In every case I can recall, the whiners were the lousy students.

The short of it is that not everyone who gets into a great engineering program is really cut out to be an engineer. [Also note that many who once failed to get into a great engineering program are great engineers now]

The fact is that engineering requires a lot of hard work. Complaining about how other majors have it "so easy" is just ignoring the fact that you're a lousy student that gets a deservedly poor grade. If you aren't getting excellent grades in your courses, my wager is that you either (1) don't have what it takes, or (2) aren't studying enough, or (3) have too many other obligations to study enough.

Yes, some instructors are lousy; some are fabulous. Most institutions let you pick your courses. Choose wisely. If there aren't enough good options, you picked the wrong institution - find a new one. And unless you're currently a top notch student, stop whining about your own failings.

For the record my girlfriend is an advertising major. Her classes require her to do the insanely difficult tasks of glueing gummy bears onto paper and cutting up magazines to make ransom notes. Her classes grade on curves and she's usually allowed to redo assignments for higher grades. She does everything the night before it's due.

On the other hand I'm a CS major, my professors usually start the semester off with the statement "I don't believe in grading on a curve." That's often followed by "late work is not accepted." I usually have a non trivial project do every week. I have to start early or I wont have time to finish the projects. I have to try to balance my time between math, science and computer science classes. My girlfriend has told me an innumerable number of times that I work too much and my major is difficult, she's right. But I don't care because I love the work and I love my major.

As an engineering manager, I've hired a lot (and fired a few) engineers and tech writers.

I don't give a rat's behind what your grades are. I care if you can think. Yes, I've rejected 4.0 "homework machines" and hired lesser GPA candidates who showed me that they could problem-solve, not just answer homework. And major doesn't matter much either, if you can show you can do the work. One of the best programmers I know has degrees in linguistics, not engineering.

So, here's some advice to all you still in school: 1) Don't confuse getting good grades with getting a good education. 2) Hiring managers are looking for people that solve problems, not cause problems.